


keep me company

by thesouthernpansy



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Bodyswap, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:12:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesouthernpansy/pseuds/thesouthernpansy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written for the prompt on the kinkmeme "Lee/Veser while Lee is still in control of ...'s body. Bonus for as much angst as possible, and ...'s reaction while it's happening."</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep me company

There's something particularly frightening about _literally_ being trapped in your own thoughts, especially since they're still so alien to you. It's like trying to navigate a foreign city without a map, to read a mystery novel with half the pages pulled out; maybe the little crane means something, but you have no way of knowing. There's no context to fit it into, no way to translate its appearance into a message that you can recognize or understand. And yet _it_ comes to _you,_ and it's the only other sign of life in this dim, grey patch of your own subconscious.

It's strangely heavy in your hands.

“You wouldn't happen to know the way out of my own head would you?” you begin, but your foot catches on the uneven flooring, and you pitch forward, your footsteps sounding hollow. You don't finish the thought, glance downward, pause. You appear to be standing on a door, and there's a strange, day-glo blue light seeping from the crack at the bottom of it.

You've seen stranger things.

“Okay, I'll play along, little crane.” There's a tiny scratch of paper against your neck as the crane settles itself on your shoulder, and you reach for the doorknob. “But if I die again, you'll have to take that guilt all the way to your tiny paper grave. I hope you're okay with that.”

There's a click, and the door swings open.

…

Several things happen very quickly before the room goes dark. There's a whip-crack like the sound of thunder, the air thick with static pressure, and the single light-bulb hanging from the ceiling pops out with a high, shrill whine. Lee's name bursts out of Veser's throat, the shout all but lost in the cacophony.

It's unbearably quiet in the aftermath. Veser holds his breath, his ears still ringing. With sluggish, jerky movements, the zombie turns to look at him. He moves like a puppet, limbs loose and uncertain as though strung through with wire. His head lolls to one side, his eyes and slack mouth lit from behind by an eerie blue light. Veser finds himself wishing he knew the guys name, if only so he could tell exactly who it is he's not talking to anymore.

“We were both murdered.”

_Fuck._ Veser knows that voice. It's distant and distorted, like listening to someone try to speak through miles of water and  _rage_ , but it's  _Lee's voice._ Veser fights to find his own thoughts around the sound of it in his skull, fogging him up like sticky smoke rising to fill a burning house. The zombie clenches and unclenches his fingers, rolls his shoulders to straighten his posture like someone learning to be comfortable in a stiff new suit. Swaying, off-balance, he turns to Veser and stills, as if noticing him for the first time.

“So why must _I_ lose my humanity?”

He's had the word thrown at him often enough, but Veser has never felt truly  _useless_ the way he does right now, powerless and stupid and empty-handed before the only person who's ever given to shits about him. More than anything he wants to offer Lee a solution, but he can't even give him an answer.

“I really don't know. I'm so sorry.” It's the biggest understatement of his life.

The thing in the zombie's skin watches him without moving. Veser catches himself reaching for him, and something cold settles into the base of his stomach. The voice is Lee's. Everything else, though, that belongs to someone else, someone with at least one enthusiastic, red-headed somebody who cares about him, and Veser knows Lee would never take that away from anyone, not on purpose.

“That's not...not your body, you can't—”

Veser stares numbly at his own outstretched hand. He can't even seem to find the strength to put it down again. But isn't that him all over, always too fucking weak to do anything right—because he  _should,_ should pull back and finish that sentence, should tell Lee that he can't stay like this, stealing someone else's body just because he can. It isn't right. And it isn't fair, not to the rightful owner or his friend, not to Veser and his  _stupidselfish_ heart, not to the quiet, constant, patient Lee who never looked at him like something with claws, hungry in all the wrong ways.

“Don't tell me what I can and can't do,” snarls the thing with Lee's voice. “You sound just like your father.”

They're only words, but they hit Veser like a fist to the gut. Then the thing that isn't Lee moves like it's actually going to strike him, and Veser honest-to-god  _winces_ in anticipation, closes his eyes and holds his breath and  _waits._ Still reaching out, still not in self-defense, the tips of his fingers brush the stiff cloth of a jacket sleeve. The body beneath it startles and stills. Something heavy and metallic-sounding clangs to the floor, and suddenly there are long, unfamiliar fingers creeping over his neck. Veser's eyes snap open to bright, glaring blue.

“I finally understood...” the voice tapers out, expression bleeding from anger to something thwarted and searching and back again, fierce and determined. In one swift, cruel motion, the zombie slams Veser back against the wall so hard it makes him dizzy.

“I finally understood all your bruises and compulsive lying...Why didn't you _tell_ me?” He presses his hand hard against Veser's throat again, once, as if for emphasis, and holds it there. Veser grunts ineffectually in protest.

“Why didn't you tell me he was a sadistic _bastard_?” Despite the fury still thick in his voice the fingers around Veser's neck slacken. Veser can feel a thumb tracing little circles against his skin. The touch is gentle, almost careful, and the hand not currently engaged in keeping Veser pinned moves to grip his wrist.

Veser's head is spinning, and he tells himself it's from the pain. Somehow, he doesn't find this to be much of an improvement, this sudden, tender turn, a cold cold hand around the fever-hot skin of his throat and the thing with Lee's voice staring down at him with a strange half-expression that's impossible to read; he's breathing so heavy and hard it sounds like snarling, his eyes way too wide and sort of lost. Veser tries to swallow, but his throat feels stuffed up with cotton.

“Christ.” It's more of a croak than a proper word, a raw, audible reaction to the fact that he knows, he fucking _knows_ (oh shit, how _much_ does he know?). Years of painstakingly constructed barriers that Veser could never drop, of necessary distance screaming against the constant urge to get closer, of the countless times he'd almost snapped and just _lunged,_ and it's a relief, sure, but the blunt, hasty, finality of it all sort of leaved Veser feeling sick.

“I couldn't...I can't...” He falls silent, looking (as always) to Lee.

Lee looks back. Then slowly, haltingly, he leans forward until his cheek presses against Veser's, mouth brushing his ear, almost  _nuzzling,_ and shit, man, how fucked-up is that?

“Keep me company.”

…

“You know the way out?” asks the hanged man. There's a luminescence to him, a dull glow under his dealthly pallor. The fingers of one hand tug at something around his neck, and a deep blue liquid oozes slowly from his hairline. Despite the color, you strongly suspect that it's blood.

“I need to find Veser...er, well, you don't know who that is...” A hallway stretches into darkness behind him, though you can make out the faint shape of distant windows and doorways. A warped mockery of a home you don't recognize.

“Someone wants to kill him...they almost got to me, too. I have to warn him.”

A sharp paper corner jabs into the side of your neck, and a name drops into your brain.

Lee looks at you imploringly, and you have the nagging feeling that you're no good at delivering bad news. You vacillate.

“S-say someth—”he begins. You don't interrupt him, but he stops short anyway, fingers still curled at his neck, eyes going wide. He seems to be seeing right through you, like he's hearing someone call his name from very far away.

“Veser?” The question has strange harmonics to it, ringing, tinny, like an echo. Then he says something else, too softly for you to hear. A rapid succession of emotions filter across Lee's ashen face, and for some reason you can't quite put your finger on, you feel like you're watching his heart break.

“No,” he say. “No, no, no, no,” broken and raw like the words are teeth being torn bloodily from his mouth.

“No, no, this can't be how it ends. Please, I—“ He turns to look at you. “Please, I can't leave him. Not like this. I need...I need...”

You never find out what it is he needs. Stepping forward, you extend a hand, unsure whether you mean to comfort or restrain him. Either way, it doesn't matter, because you don't reach him. In the time it takes you to blink, the walls around you go a bright, sickly green color, the ceiling disappearing into blackness above you. The little paper crane abandons its perch on your shoulder to wheel briefly through the air, and you notice it doesn't cast a shadow.

The hanged man has disappeared.

…

_Anything,_ thinks Veser instinctively, and means it. The full impact of Lee's words hasn't even hit him yet (lost somewhere between the desperate spike of heat that unfurls low in his gut and the way Lee's mouth lingers along his jaw), but right now Veser doesn't really have two shits to rub together. He's waited so long for Lee to ask. To  _want_ to ask. He's always been so selfless, so fucking  _nice,_ in a way Veser could never, never be, and damn if that didn't drive Veser up a wall.

Out loud, he laughs, hoarse and quiet and harsh, bubbling up fro somewhere too far back in his chest, too close to his heart.

“What does that even mean?”

Lee laughs in return, quick and breathy and cool against Veser's skin. Like he knows Veser knows exactly what he means, and. Sure, cards on the table, Veser can't say for certain that he doesn't. He knows what he  _hopes_ it means. He wishes he was better at self-delusion when it comes to the way he feels about Lee, but he's become so good at hating himself it's almost an accomplishment these days. And in any case those searchlight eyes have already seen straight through him, down into his fetid, guilty core (breathing Lee's name into the cloth of his pillowcase, awkward and barely balanced with his boxers around his knees, the heat and slickness, the stickiness, the damp smell of it all perfect perfect  _perfect_ in a way that means Veser can't meet his own eyes in the mirror afterward), and the underwhelming epiphany of it doesn't even seem to be all that much of a surprise.

It's not so hard to believe. Lee's always been good at not knowing anything he didn't want to, seeing without noticing (that's right, isn't it?).

Veser counts the beats of his heart as they pulse against Lee's palm and thinks,  _maybe._

_Maybe._

Then Lee's mouth opens against Veser's neck, and a horrible, vulnerable gasp swells up and spills out of him. Lee crowds greedily into his space, curls his fingers against Veser's spine. Veser's whole body feels like one long line of tension, like something pulled taut past its snapping point, like one wrong move could shatter him into an even bigger mess than he already is. He feels paralyzed.

Of course Lee notices the way Veser tenses, freezes up, and he seems to take it as a personal insult, because his attentions start getting steadily rougher, more insistent. A shudder goes through Veser at the first graze of teeth, half desperate and half despairing as at least part of him definitely starts to react.

Lee rears back like a cobra, and Veser catches a flash of something in his eyes, brief and bright and startling as lightening, before Lee's mouth comes crashing down on his.

It's worse than the anger, because it's still _not right,_ but Veser responds to it anyway. Lee kisses him, savage and hungry, and it _hurts_ a little, his own dumfucking teeth scraping at his tongue and the inside of his mouth, and shit on a stick that's going to _suck_ later.

Veser forces the thought out of his head; he doesn't want to think about later, about anything that's going to happen beyond this, beyond Lee kissing him and all the places where they touch. It's a toxic thing, a poorly measured-out combination of what Veser's wanted for so long and what he feels he deserves, not enough of either to be satisfying, though in the end that just seems to mean that he can't get enough (what else is fucking new?).

And that's it. Veser gives up; grabs at Lee's shoulders and holds on for dear life. Fuck it, fuck _everything,_ this is nothing like he imagined it would be, not soft, not careful, not Lee stopping every ten seconds with that gentle, hesitant smile, _are you sure this is okay, it's all right if you want to stop, are you sure, are you sure,_ like he's being a goddamn _nuisance._

_But this is what you wanted,_ says a mean little voice at the back of Veser's mind, and okay  _yes._ But not like this. Still, he lets Lee bite at his lips, run the pad of his thumb along Veser's hipbone; still, he whimpers into Lee's mouth and clutches at Lee's jacket to keep himself upright. Nothing is permanently fixed, and it isn't going to be okay, but for the moment,  _god_ it's good.

Veser feels like he's burning up, an isolated point of warmth between the gritty stone wall and the unyielding force of Lee's borrowed body. His brain gives him something brief and stupid about a rock and a hard place, and  _speaking of hard,_ and Veser makes a choked noise that Lee all but licks out of his mouth. He can't think straight; he's always been impulsive, and even if he were currently inclined to be cautious, he's far too busy being turned on.

One broad, long-fingered hand finds the bulge in Veser's jeans, covers him base to tip with slow, maddening pressure, and Veser groans as his head thuds back against the wall. Lee takes advantage of the opportunity to suck a bruise onto his exposed throat. Veser squeezes his eyes shut until tears prick at the corners of them, keeps them shut as Lee unfastens his fly and tugs down his pants, rucks up Veser's shirt and drops to his knees.

“Tell me you want this,” he orders, pausing inches, less than inches, away from where Veser's erection is leaking dampness through his boxers.

Struck stupid with lust, it's all Veser can do to to parse the command, and he almost laughs at the horrible absurdity of it. Like there's any chance in hell Lee doesn't already know the answer to that.

“Veser.” Lee's voice is a warning, sharp with impatience.

Everything Veser wants to say sits in a hard knot in his chest, confessions and reassurances and everything he planned he'd say wound up too tightly to pick apart.

“Please,” is all he can manage in the end. In this, at least, he's never been above begging. It's not like that last shred of dignity was doing anything for him anyway.

It's enough. Lee hums his approval as he mouths at Veser's cock through the thin cotton of his boxers, and the sound vibrates through him, shakes him straight down to his bones and looses a moan to fall unceremoniously from his lips. Finally,  _finally,_ Lee gets Veser's underwear down to his knees and leans in. His tongue is strangely dry as he licks up Veser's shaft, but he quickly lathes it over the head, collecting pre-cum as he goes, and with the aid of the moisture it affords him it isn't long before he's established a steady rhythm. Veser's hips jerk forward almost involuntarily, and Lee pins him back against the wall with both hands, fingers bruising-hard against his hipbones, and swallows him down with a low, growling noise at the back of his throat.

“ _Fuck_ ,” says Veser eloquently. He has no idea what to do with his hands; for some reason his first instinct to put them in Lee's hair feels wrong (though, really what about this isn't?). Instead, he smooths them along Lee's arms, covers his hands, repeats Lee's name over and over and and sounds like he's sobbing.

A familiar sensation starts to spread through him, the tingling, near-numbness that starts in his fingers and toes and moves through his veins in wave after pulsing wave. Veser's breath shatters into harsh, high gasps, his entire world reduced to the feeling of Lee's mouth on him.

“Wait.” He tries to get the words out, he really does. “Wait, Lee, _fuck,_ I—”

“Um,” says someone from the doorway.

…

His name is Veser, though he still hasn’t introduced himself. His breathes hitches when you address him, but Hanna stops you with a touch when you try to explain.

“Maybe, uh, not right now, Ringo,” he says with a small, distracted noise that is not quite a laugh, his eyes flicking to Veser. Veser stares back at him, hard and challenging and very pointedly _not_ looking at you. Beside you, Hanna is still, hand caught in your sleeve, his expression grim as Veser’s gaze skids to the opposite end of the room. A dark bead of blood wells up where Veser’s gnawing at his lower lip. He ignores it. He shoves both hands into the pockets of his hoodie, but not before you notice how badly they’re shaking.

Then you follow the look, and understand.

You don’t call out, but it’s a close thing. In the poor light, Lee’s silhouette is blurred and black and so terribly still. You think of pale, pleading eyes, and an echo of loss settles over you.

Veser sucks in a stilted, shuddering breath and begins to sob.

**Author's Note:**

> written while listening to this playlist on 8tracks:  
> http://8tracks.com/thesouthernpansy/dumb-i-sound
> 
> that i made  
> because no one else is making them and it's a gosh darn diddly tragedy


End file.
